CHAPTER XXI

At this season Mr. Pericles reappeared. He had been, he said, through

"Paris, Turin, Milano, Veniss, and by Trieste over the Summering to

Vienna on a tour for a voice." And in no part of the Continent, his

vehement declaration assured the ladies, had he found a single one. It

was one universal croak--ahi! And Mr. Pericles could, affirm that

Purgatory would have no pains for him after the torments he had recently

endured. "Zey are frogs if zey are not geese," said Mr. Pericles. "I give

up. Opera is dead. Hein? for a time;" and he smiled almost graciously,

adding: "Where is she?" For Emilia was not present.

The ladies now perceived a greatness of mind in the Greek's devotion to

music, and in his non-mercenary travels to assist managers of Opera by

discovering genius. His scheme for Emilia fired them with delight. They

were about to lay down all the material arrangements at once, but Mrs.

Chump, who had heard that there was a new man in the house, now entered

the room, prepared to conquer him. As thus, after a short form of

introduction: "D'ye do, sir! and ye're Mr. Paricles. Oh! but ye're a

Sultan, they say. Not in morr'ls, sir. And vary pleasant to wander on the

Cont'nent with a lot o' lacqueys at your heels. It's what a bachelor can

do. But I ask ye, sir, is ut fair, ye think, to the poor garls that has

to stop at home?"

Hereat the ladies of Brookfield, thus miserably indicated, drew upon

their self-command that sprang from the high sense of martyrdom.

Mr. Pericles did not reply to Mrs. Chump at all. He turned to Adela,

saying aloud: "What is zis person?"

It might have pleased them to hear any slight put publicly on Mrs. Chump

in the first resistance to the woman, but in the present stage their

pride defended her. "Our friend," was the reply with which Arabella

rebuked his rudeness; and her sister approved her. "We can avoid showing

that we are weak in our own opinion, whatsoever degrades us," they had

said during a consultation. Simultaneously they felt that Mr. Pericles

being simply a millionaire and not In Society, being also a middle-class

foreigner (a Greek whose fathers ran with naked heels and long lank hair

on the shores of the Aegean), before such a man they might venture to

identify this their guest with themselves an undoubted duty, in any case,

but not always to be done; at least, not with grace and personal

satisfaction. Therefore, the "our friend" dispersed a common gratulatory

glow. Very small points, my masters; but how are coral-islands built?

Mrs. Chump fanned her cheek, in complete ignorance of the offence and

defence. Chump, deceased, in amorous mood, had praised her management of

the fan once, when breath was in him: "'Martha,' says he, winkin' a sort

of 'mavourneen' at me, ye know--'Martha! with a fan in your hand, if

ye're not a black-eyed beauty of a Spaniard, ye little devil of Seville!'

says he." This she had occasionally confided to the ladies. The marital

eulogy had touched her, and she was not a woman of coldly-flowing blood,

she had an excuse for the constant employment of the fan.

"And well, Mr. Paricles! have ye got nothin' to tell us about foreign

countesses and their slips? Because, we can listen, sir, garls or not.

Sure, if they understand ye, ye teach 'em nothin'; and if they don't

understand ye, where's the harm done? D'ye see, sir? It's clear in favour

of talkin'."

Mr. Pericles administered consolation to his moustache by twisting it

into long waxy points. "I do not know; I do not know," he put her away

with, from time to time. In the end Mrs. Chump leaned over to Arabella.

"Don't have 'm, my dear," she murmured.

"You mean--?" quoth Arabella.

"Here's the driest stick that aver stood without sap."

Arabella flushed when she took the implication that she was looking on

the man as a husband. Adela heard the remarks, and flushed likewise. Mrs.

Chump eyed them both. "It's for the money o' the man," she soliloquized

aloud, as her fashion was. Adela jumped up, and with an easy sprightly

posture of her fair, commonly studious person, and natural run of notes

"Oh!" she cried, "I begin to feel what it is to be like a live fish on

the fire, frying, frying, frying! and if he can keep his Christian

sentiments under this infliction, what a wonderful hero he must be! What

a hot day!"

She moved swiftly to the door, and flung it open. A sight met her eyes at

which she lost her self-possession. She started back, uttering a soft

cry.

"Ah! aha! oh!" went the bitter ironic drawl of Mr. Pericles, whose sharp

glance had caught the scene as well.

Emilia came forward with a face like sunset. Diplomacy, under the form of

Wilfrid Pole, kicked its heels behind, and said a word or two in a tone

of false cheerfulness.

"Oh! so!" Mr. Pericles frowned, while Emilia held her hand out to him.

"Yeas! You are quite well? H'm! You are burnt like a bean--hein? I shall

ask you what you have been doing, by and by."

Happily for decency, Mrs. Chump had not participated in the fact

presented by ocular demonstration. She turned about comfortably to greet

Wilfrid, uttering the inspired remark: "Ye look red from a sly kiss!"

"For one?" said he, sharpening his blunted wits on this dull instrument.

The ladies talked down their talk. Then Wilfrid and Mr. Pericles

interchanged quasi bows.

"Oh, if he doesn't show his upper teeth like an angry cat, or a leopard

I've seen!" cried Mrs. Chump in Adela's ear, designating Mr. Pericles.

"Does he know Mr. Wilfrud's in the British army, and a new lieuten't,

gazetted and all?"

Mr. Pericles certainly did not look pleasantly upon Wilfrid: Emilia

received his unconcealed wrath and spite.

"Go and sing a note!" he said.

"At the piano?" Emilia quietly asked.

"At piano, harp, what you will--it is ze voice I want."

Emilia pitched her note high from a full chest and with glad bright eyes,

which her fair critics thought just one degree brazen, after the

revelation in the doorway.

Mr. Pericles listened; wearing an aching expression, as if he were

sending one eye to look up into his brain for a judgement disputed in

that sovereign seat.

Still she held on, and then gave a tremulous, rich, contralto note.

"Oh! the human voice!" cried Adela, overcome by the transition of tones.

"Like going from the nightingale to the nightjar," said Arabella.

Mrs. Chump remarked: "Ye'll not find a more susceptible woman to musuc

than me."

Wilfrid looked away. Pride coursed through his veins in a torrent.

When the voice was still, Mr. Pericles remained in a pondering posture.

"You go to play fool with zat voice in Milano, you are flogged," he cried

terribly, shaking his forefinger.

Wilfrid faced round in wrath, but Mr. Pericles would not meet his

challenge, continuing: "You hear? you hear?--so!" and Mr. Pericles

brought the palms of his hands in collision.

"Marcy, man!" Mrs. Chump leaped from her chair; "d'ye mean that those

horrud forr'ners'll smack a full-grown young woman?--Don't go to 'm, my

dear. Now, take my 'dvice, little Belloni, and don't go. It isn't the

sting o' the smack, ye know--"

"Shall I sing anything to you?" Emilia addressed Mr. Pericles. The latter

shrugged to express indifference. Nevertheless she sang. She had never

sung better. Mr. Pericles clutched his chin in one hand, elbow on knee.

The ladies sighed to think of the loss of homage occasioned by the fact

of so few being present to hear her. Wilfrid knew himself the fountain of

it all, and stood fountain-like, in a shower of secret adulation: a

really happy fellow. This: that his beloved should be the centre of eyes,

and pronounced exquisite by general approbation, besides subjecting him

to a personal spell: this was what he wanted. It was mournful to think

that Circumstance had not at the same time created the girl of noble

birth, or with an instinct for spiritual elegance. But the world is

imperfect.

Presently he became aware that she was understood to be singing pointedly

to him: upon which he dismissed the council of his sensations, and began

to diplomatize cleverly. Leaning over to Adela, he whispered:

"Pericles wants her to go to Italy. My belief is, that she won't."

"And why?" returned Adela, archly reproachful.

"Well, we've been spoiling her a little, perhaps. I mean, we men, of

course. But, I really don't think that I'm chiefly to blame. You won't

allow Captain Gambier to be in fault, I know."

"Why not?" said Adela.

"Well, if you will, then he is the principal offender."

Adela acted disbelief; but, unprepared for her brother's perfectly

feminine audacity of dissimulation, she thought: "He can't be in earnest

about the girl," and was led to fancy that Gambier might, and to

determine to see whether it was so.

By this manoeuvre, Wilfrid prepared for himself a defender when the

charge was brought against him.

Mr. Pericles was thunderstruck on hearing Emilia refuse to go to Italy. A

scene of tragic denunciation on the one hand, and stubborn decision on

the other, ensued.

"I shall not mind zis" (he spoke of Love and the awakening of the female

heart) "not when you are trained. It is good, zen, and you have fire from

it. But, now! little fool, I say, it is too airly--too airly! How shall

you learn--eh? with your brain upon a man? And your voice, little fool, a

thing of caprice, zat comes and goes as he will, not you will. Hein? like

a barrel-organ, which he turns ze handle.--Mon Dieu! Why did I leave

her?" Mr. Pericles struck his brow with his wrist, clutching at the long

thin slice of hair that did greasy duty for the departed crop on his

poll. "Did I not know it was a woman? And so you are, what you say, in

lofe."

Emilia replied: "I have not said so," with exasperating coolness.

"You have your eye on a man. And I know him, zat man! When he is tired of

you--whiff, away you go, a puff of smoke! And you zat I should make a

Queen of Opera! A Queen? You shall have more rule zan twenty

Queens--forty! See" (Mr. Pericles made his hand go like an aspen-leaf

from his uplifted wrist); "So you shall set ze hearts of sossands! To

dream of you, to adore you! and flowers, flowers everywhere, on your

head, at your feet. You choose your lofer from ze world. A husband, if it

is your taste. Bose, if you please. Zen, I say, you shall, you shall lofe

a man. Let him tease and sting--ah! it will be magnifique: Aha! ze voice

will sharpen, go deep; yeas! to be a tale of blood. Lofe till you could

stab yourself:--Brava! But now? Little fool, I say!"

Emilia believed that she was verily forfeiting an empire. Her face wore a

soft look of delight. This renunciation of a splendid destiny for

Wilfrid's sake, seemed to make her worthier of him, and as Mr. Pericles

unrolled the list of her rejected treasures, her bosom heaved without a

regret.

"Ha!" Mr. Pericles flung away from her: "go and be a little gutter-girl!"

The musical connoisseur drew on his own disappointment alone for

eloquence. Had he been thinking of her, he might have touched cunningly

on her love for Italy. Music was the passion of the man; and a

millionaire's passion is something that can make a stir. He knew that in

Emilia he had discovered a pearl of song rarely to be found, and his

object was to polish and perfect her at all cost: perhaps, as a secondary

and far removed consideration, to point to her as a thing belonging to

him, for which Emperors might envy him. The thought of losing her drove

him into fits of rage. He took the ladies one by one, and treated them

each to a horrible scene of gesticulation and outraged English. H accused

their brother of conduct which they were obliged to throw (by a process

of their own) into the region of Fine Shades, before they dared venture

to comprehend him. Gross facts in relationship with the voice, this

grievous "machine, not man,"--as they said--stated to them, harshly,

impetuously. The ladies felt that he had bored their ears with hot iron

pins. Adela tried laughter as a defence from his suggestion against

Wilfrid, but had shortly afterwards to fly from the fearful anatomist.

She served her brother thoroughly in the Council of Three; so that Mr.

Pericles was led by them to trust that there had; been mere fooling in

his absence, and that the emotions he looked to as the triumphant reserve

in Emilia's bosom, to be aroused at some crisis when she was before the

world, slumbered still. She, on her part, contrasting her own burning

sensations with this quaint, innocent devotion to Art and passion for

music, felt in a manner guilty; and whenever he stormed with additional

violence, she became suppliant, and seemed to bend and have regrets. Mr.

Pericles would then say, with mollified irritability: "You will come to

Italy to-morrow?--Ze day after?--not at all?" The last was given with a

roar, for lack of her immediate response. Emilia would find a tear on her

eyelids at times. Surround herself as she might with her illusions, she

had no resting-place in Wilfrid's heart, and knew it. She knew it as the

young know that they are to die on a future day, without feeling the

sadness of it, but with a dimly prevalent idea that this life is

therefore incomplete. And again her blood, as with a wave of rich

emotion, washed out the blank spot. She thought: "What can he want but my

love?" And thus she satisfied her own hungry questioning by seeming to

supply an answer to his.

The ladies of Brookfield by no means encouraged Emilia to refuse the

generous offer of Mr. Pericles. They thought, too, that she might--might

she? Oh! certainly she might go to Italy under his protection. "Would you

let one of your blood?" asked Wilfrid brutally. With some cunning he led

them to admit that Emilia's parents should rightly be consulted in such a

case.

One day Mr. Pericles said to the ladies: "I shall give a fete: a party

monstre. In ze air: on grass. I beg you to invite friends of yours."

Before the excogitation of this splendid resolve, he had been observed to

wear for some period a conspiratorial aspect. When it was delivered, and

Arabella had undertaken the management of the "party monstre"--(which was

to be on Besworth Lawn, and, as it was not their own party, could be

conducted with a sort of quasi-contemptuous superiority to incongruous

gatherings)--this being settled, the forehead of Mr. Pericles cleared and

he ceased to persecute Emilia.

"I am not one that is wopped," he said significantly; nodding to his

English hearers, as if this piece of shrewd acquaintance with the

expressive mysteries of their language placed them upon equal terms.

It was really 'a providential thing' (as devout people phrase it) that

Laura Tinley and Mabel Copley should call shortly after this, and invite

the ladies to a proposed picnic of theirs on Besworth Lawn. On Besworth

Lawn, of all places! and they used the word 'picnic.'

"A word suggestive of gnawed drumstick and ginger-beer bottles." Adela

quoted some scapegoat of her acquaintance, as her way was when she wished

to be pungent without incurring the cold sisterly eye of reproof for a

vulgarism.

Both Laura and Mabel, when they heard of the mighty entertainment fixed

for Besworth Lawn by Mr. Pericles, looked down. They were invited, and

looked up. There was the usual amount of fencing with the combative

Laura, who gave ground at all points, and as she was separating, said (so

sweetly!) "Of course you have heard of the arrest of your--what does one

call him?--friend?--or a French word?"

"You mean?" quoth Arabella.

"That poor, neatly brushed, nice creature whom you patronized--who played

the organ!" she jerked to Arabella's dubious eyes.

"And he?" Arabella smiled, complacently.

"Then perhaps you may know that all is arranged for him?" said Laura,

interpreting by the look more than the word, after a habit of women.

"Indeed, to tell you the truth, I know nothing," said Arabella.

"Really?" Laura turned sharply to Cornelia, who met her eyes and did not

exhibit one weak dimple.

The story was, that Mr. Chips, the Bookseller of Hillford, objected to

the departure of Mr. Barrett, until Mr. Barrett had paid the bill of Mr.

Chips: and had signified his objection in the form of a writ. "When, if

you know anything of law," said Laura, "you will see why he remains. For,

a writ once served, you are a prisoner. That is, I believe, if it's above

twenty pounds. And Mr. Chips' bill against Mr. Barrett was, I have heard,

twenty-three pounds and odd shillings. Could anything be more

preposterous? And Mr. Chips deserves to lose his money!"

Ah! to soar out of such a set as this, of which Laura Tinley is a sample,

are not some trifling acts of inhumanity and practices in the art of

'cutting' permissible? So the ladies had often asked of the Unseen in

their onward course, if they did not pointedly put the question now.

Surely they had no desire to give pain, but the nature that endowed them

with a delicate taste, inspired them to defend it. They listened gravely

to Laura, who related that not only English books, but foreign (repeated

and emphasized), had been supplied by Mr. Chips to Mr. Barrett.

They were in the library, and Laura's eyes rested on certain yellow and

blue covers of books certainly not designed for the reading of Mr. Pole.

"I think you must be wrong as to Mr. Barrett's position," said Adela.

"No, dear; not at all," Laura was quick to reply. "Unless you know

anything. He has stated that he awaits money remittances. He has, in

fact, overrun the constable, and my brother Albert says, the constable is

very likely to overrun ham, in consequence. Only a joke! But an organist

with, at the highest computation--poor absurd thing!--fifty-five pounds

per annum: additional for singing lessons, it is true,--but an organist

with a bookseller's bill of twenty-three pounds! Consider!"

"Foreign books, too!" interjected Adela.

"Not so particularly improving to his morals, either!" added Laura.

"You are severe upon the greater part of the human race," said Arabella.

"So are the preachers, dear," returned Laura.

"The men of our religion justify you?" asked Arabella.

"Let me see;--where were we?" Laura retreated in an affected

mystification.

"You had reached the enlightened belief that books written by any but

English hands were necessarily destructive of men's innocence," said

Arabella; and her sisters thrilled at the neatness of the stroke, for the

moment, while they forgot the ignoble object it transfixed. Laura was

sufficiently foiled by it to be unable to return to the Chips-Barrett

theme. Throughout the interview Cornelia had maintained a triumphant

posture, superior to Arabella's skill in fencing, seeing that it exposed

no weak point of the defence by making an attack, and concealed

especially the confession implied by a relish for the conflict. Her

sisters considerately left her to recover herself, after this mighty

exercise of silence.